Terry Anderson

Biography

Terry Anderson was born on October 27, 1947, in Lorain, Ohio. He served as a Marine in Vietnam before becoming a journalist, eventually rising to become the chief Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press, based in Beirut. He was one of hundreds of Western journalists, diplomats, academics, and aid workers who lived and worked in Beirut during the civil war, attracted by the story of Lebanon's terrible ordeal and, paradoxically, by the city's resilience and cosmopolitan culture that persisted even through the fighting. On March 16, 1985, Anderson was kidnapped by members of Islamic Jihad — a group associated with Hezbollah and Iranian intelligence — as he returned from a tennis match in West Beirut. He was the last American hostage taken and the longest-held. For six years, eight months, and twenty-six days, Anderson was chained, blindfolded, moved between locations, and kept in isolation and squalor in basements and apartments across Beirut and the Bekaa Valley. He was held alongside other Western hostages including CIA station chief William Buckley (who was tortured to death), journalist Jeremy Levin, and Church of England envoy Terry Waite. Anderson's captivity became a cause célèbre in the United States and drove significant US foreign policy decisions, including the disastrous Iran-Contra affair in which the Reagan administration secretly sold arms to Iran hoping to secure the release of American hostages in Lebanon. Anderson himself later expressed bitterness about these negotiations, feeling that the administration's dealings prolonged rather than shortened hostage crises by signaling that kidnapping Americans was a profitable strategy. He was released on December 4, 1991, after 2,455 days in captivity, as Hezbollah secured the release of Lebanese prisoners held by Israel in exchange. Anderson returned to journalism, wrote a memoir, pursued legal action against the Iranian government (winning a $341 million judgment that was never paid), and became an advocate for journalists' rights and hostage families. He died on April 21, 2024.

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